


High Five

by witchsoup



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Draco Malfoy is a Little Shit, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-27 15:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19015258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchsoup/pseuds/witchsoup
Summary: There are books in the Restricted Section from the time of Merlin that describe the feeling, the sensation of making skin to skin contact with your soulmate for the first time.





	High Five

Soulmates is the best word they have in English to describe the phenomenon.

There is a room in the Department of Mysteries dedicated to the study of it, the dissection of love, scouring the chambers of the heart to find the tissue of it, fibrous and tightly furled around the ventricles, pumping adoration around the body with every furious contraction.

In the Department of Mysteries, in the Love Chamber, Unspeakables gorge themselves on Amortentia and wander the streets under heavy Disillusionment charms, brushing fingertips with strangers.

It's there they discover that love is found in the brain, in the marinade of chemicals that Amortentia exploits.

Two hundred years later the Muggles give them names like oxytocin.

There are books in the Restricted Section from the time of Merlin that describe the feeling, the sensation of making skin to skin contact with your soulmate for the first time. When Pansy asks her mother about it, sitting cross-legged on the richly carpeted floor of her dressing room, her only response is a murmured Accio, and to less than gently tug Pansy's tiny white gloves over her tiny white hands.

"Be good for nanny, darling."

On a stool outside Fortescue's she swings her feet, legs clad in thick woolen tights, and gets raspberry sauce all over her gloves. Her father checks his watch and frowns, casting a cooling charm over them. It is mid-July, and he reminds her to keep drinking from the tall glass of water that sweats in front of her.

There's something of a commotion on the other side of the street, and when Pansy turns, eyes wide, towards the sight of flashing cameras and the sight of Celestina Warbeck's entourage forcing back the crowd, the stool wobbles on the cobblestones. Her scream, though short, is loud enough that the proprietor comes running, and her father's wand is trained on the man, warning him to stay back.

Her cheek on the stones is warm, though grit and dust press into her skin. Behind her nose, the sensation of tears begin to build as she takes stock of her scraped knee, the tear in her new dress, and the blotched scarlet stain on her white tights.

Pansy's father scoops her up, and leans away when she goes to bury her tear-streaked face in his neck.

It's different in France. An entirely different culture, especially when it comes to love, Daphne tells her.

"You don't always fall in love with your soulmate, Daph. You've been reading too many romance novels. Mother says-"

"So hung up on rules, Pansy. Don't you want it? The chance encounter? To go outside and walk in the grass without shoes, or hold hands with someone?"

She wants. Pansy wants and wants and wants, and imagines that the slip of her own fingertips against her face are the hands of someone who loves her, someone who isn't afraid of what her parents will say when they turn up on the doorstep hand in hand and happy.

"That's a fantasy, Daph. They don't wear gloves at Beauxbatons because they have charms to do it for them."

Her dress is delicate and feminine, layers of blush chiffon shot through with golden thread. It's perfect. She's perfect. Her hair has been arranged in artful waves by an incredibly focused Daphne, cheeks pink and tongue poking out the side of her mouth in concentration. The parcel had arrived the week before, wrapped in white tissue paper and carried by two owls she recognised from home. Her mother's impeccable handwriting had been smudged by the spray of perfume and the scent is stirred every time she moves. Pansy tucks one pale curl behind her ear, turning her head in front of the mirror to admire the diamond studs that had been hiding in the toe of her new shoes.

Daphne appears behind her, the silk of her gloves sliding against the shell of Pansy's ear as she admonishes, "You'll ruin all my work."

When her parents attend Ministry Galas, or garden parties at the first flush of spring Narcissa Malfoy's prized rose garden, Pansy's mother will slip a hand in the crook of her husband's arm, wedding ring glinting on her slender finger.

Pansy arrives at the Yule ball arm in arm with Daphne, a bright smile fixed on her face as she takes in the snow-dusted Christmas trees, an uneasy knot in her stomach as she scans the crowd for Draco. She knows, intimately, the difference between envy and jealousy. The top of her head only reaches Daphne's cheekbones, cut like fine crystal in the flawless planes of her face. Where Pansy's hair is short, the white blonde of infancy evolving into a buttery gold, Daphne's hair reaches further than her fingertips, dark and glossy and grown-up. At fourteen, Daphne looks like more of a woman than Pansy could ever hope to be, in her pink gown, with her round, pink cheeks.

Theodore Nott watches the dark stain of Daphne's mouth from across the Great Hall as her lipstick leaves a perfect half-moon on the rim of her goblet.

And Draco- Draco stares, open-mouthed as Hermione Granger enters the room on the arm of Viktor Krum.

Her stomach clenches at the sight of them. Granger smiles when Krum takes her hand in his, skin to skin, making their way towards Potter and Weasley, whose dress robes look like something Pansy might pull from her decrepit great-grandmother's wardrobe. If, of course, it was dark. And she was pressed for time.

Potter's dress robes, in the cold, dim light, appear black, but when he moves under a lantern she sees that they're green. Slytherin green.

She's forced to watch, face set in something she hopes looks like indifference, as the champions open the floor.

When Fleur Delacour spins in the arms of her partner, the flash of exposed skin at her back is like a punch to the gut.

Draco watches, enraptured.

Later, when she dances with Blaise, he tells her she looks pretty.

"You know you can't compete with what he can't have, Pansy," he murmurs into her ear, close enough that his breath sends a tingle down her spine. "I should know."

Her eyes flick to Draco, flanked, always, guarded, by Vincent and Greg. He downs his drink and sits back, looking petulant. Pansy's chin tips up by degrees, and she fixes Blaise with a haughty glare.

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Just because he can't touch you, it doesn't make you untouchable. If he's not happy with his lot in life, come seventeen, you'll be there for him, won't you? Covered up to the chin, like a good little Pureblood fiancee."

"There's nothing in place, my parents-"

"Won't settle for anything less than a Malfoy. I should know. My mother had her heart set on adding some legitimacy to the family name, but I told her not to bother."

The song comes to a close, and Blaise spins her a final time, before tugging at her waist to bring her close once more.

"What do you mean?"

"They never considered that their Pureblood sons ought to wear gloves, too."

Draco is flushed, nose red, even in his heavy velvet coat. Pansy shivers as a breeze crosses her shoulder blades, irritated that the teachers hadn't thought to put warming charms on the courtyard. Or maybe they had thought, and decided it better to keep the students indoors, under supervision.

"I like your dress," says Draco, and she can't help but think that his eyes are glazed with a sheen of mockery, so used to seeing her preen under his compliments.

"Mother sent it for me," she replies. "We saw it in Paris over the holidays, and I thought I was going to have to wear my robes from Christmas-"

He turns towards her, gently gripping at her upper arm where her gloves meet an inch of bare skin, running his thumb along the stitching.

"Your mother has good taste."

Pansy's breath hitches as he leans towards her, close enough that she could reach out a hand and grip at the translucent hairs on the back of his head, where they meet his neck. The spot she has daydreamed about running her fingertips over as she sits behind him an Charms, unable to look away when he bends to take a note with his stupid, ostentatious eagle-feather quill.

"Stop. Draco. Stop."

Her lips burn with the absence of his kiss.

"Your parents would be thrilled if it was me, Pans-"

"What about me? What if it's not- what if I have no interest in finding out?"

"We all know it'll happen eventually." His bottom lip, pink and full, sticks out in a childish expression of irritation. "Everyone knows you're in love with me-"

"Then everyone has it confused. The only person in this school who's in love with you is you."

Pansy's shoes click rapidly against the flagstones as she makes her way towards Umbridge's office, glancing at the scroll in her hand as if it could spontaneously combust at any moment. After what happened to Marietta Edgecombe, she wouldn't put anything past Granger.

She sees Millicent and the others at the other end of the corridor, let by Umbridge in yet another set of offensively pink robes. With her unremarkable name and terrible clothes, Pansy stomachs the woman only as far as required to keep the silver I pinned to her breast. Drawing her wand, Umbridge casts a muffling charm at the floor, and immediately Pansy stops in her tracks.

Raising one finger to her lips, Umbridge smiles.

When she sees Draco disappear through the office door and hears Potter shout, Pansy turns on her heel. She slides her wand from her pocket and shrinks the scroll until it is no longer than her smallest finger without breaking her stride.

Pansy watches the inches drop from around Draco's waist, carelessly exposed, then carefully covered, as their sixth year progresses. As his sentences become more and more clipped. As he scratches at his left wrist with increasing frequency.

Around Halloween she lies awake in her bed, listening to Daphne carefully brushing out her hair and humming a tune so often played in her mother's dressing room.

"What is Draco doing to himself?" she asks, voice small.

Daphne's hand stills, and she draws her dressing gown (pale green silk, brought back from Theo's latest trip to China for his grandfather's birthday) tighter across her chest.

"Covering himself in glory," she spits. "What choice does he have? What choice will any of us have-"

"It's not going to happen to Theo."

"Do you think it matters to Theo what happens to Theo?" She screws up her eyes, and her brows furrow. "He won't talk to you, he won't talk to Theo, all he does is disappear behind Vince and Greg- and another thing, Snape isn't exactly oblivious to any of it."

Pansy sits up in bed.

"Do you think Narcissa knows? Does Lucius-"

"You of all people know that what Lucius Malfoy knows couldn't fill half a textbook. That's exactly why Draco's in this mess in the first place."

Plucking her wand from the pocket of her dressing gown, Daphne begins a delicate twisting motion, winding her wrist in increasingly smaller concentric circles above her head until it is covered in a crown of braids.

"Draco made his decision. We all have to make our own." Her expression softens when her eyes land on Pansy's pale face. "We have time, Pans."

Her hands are cold, slender and pale, on her cheek.

"I don't care much for the race for power, you know. But what Draco is doing... Nothing can come from that but bruised knees and bowed heads. We're not meant for that sort of life."

Dark Arts class is where she learns to take. Her proficiency with the Cruciatus curse isn't particularly unsurprising, though her magic is too blunt a weapon to fully master the intricacies of the Imperius. Theo, in line with his usual dramatics, whispers in the ears of the younger ones, specifically those whose magic hasn't yet been honed and suppressed the way theirs had after less than a year at Hogwarts.

This is what her mother told her happened to Mudbloods, festering and alone, full of incomprehensible power and the terror that can only belong to those too young to protect what they love from themselves. 

She knows the children, most of them Purebloods in a dwindling class of only six, this year. There is no power here, not amongst the children who cower and cringe from her blank gaze. One girl, a Ravenclaw, has been sent to Alecto for discipline after launching Theo clean across the room under his silent coaxing.

Theo has been sent to the Slytherin common room to mend his own dislocated shoulder and shattered cheekbone.

Daphne has told her, because of course she has, that Pansy reminds her of Bellatrix Lestrange when she casts the curse, taller stature and careful grooming notwithstanding.

Bella doesn't wear gloves. They say it's because she's a married woman, but Narcissa says that Rodolphus wasn't the one for whom the earth shifted.

The Head Girl badge gleams on her robes, and her dragonskin shoes are slick with mud from her latest excursion into the Forbidden Forest, tracking unicorns with the sort of charms you might find in a little girl's magazine.

It's not about the charms: the apple cores, and the needles, and the thread. It's about purity. It's about intent.

A core thrown over her shoulder lands in the shape of what could be her first initial, a little misshapen from the force with which she peeled the fruit. A little blood only makes the charm stronger.

It's Pansy's job to shepherd the stricken children to the Hospital Wing, where Madam Pomfrey glares at her silently, taking the wrist of each child as she guides them to the ever expanding row of beds. The latest one, a boy with sandy blond hair and skinny legs, collapses the moment he reaches the door to Pomfrey's office.

The nurse's slap stings, sends a fiery pain across her cheek for the most fleeting of moments, before she turns and exits the wing with a white face, leaving muddy footprints in her wake. 

Pansy has dreams about Daphne and Theo, happy and haughty, eating dinner with the Greengrasses. Her guilt rocks her to sleep and nausea wakes her at the crack of dawn, vomit staining the crisp white of her sheets. She knows without knowing how that Daphne will leave her at the first whiff of danger.

Her mother wants her married to Adrian Pucey before he can take the Mark, because there is nothing so uncouth as cheering for the winning team only once they have become winners. Pansy doesn't have the heart to tell her that Pucey is nothing, that the Mark doesn't mean what it used to, and that when Adrian pulls off her glove on Christmas Eve to clutch at her hand in the entrance hall of her childhood home all she feels is revulsion.

She sees his death in the writhing of the snake on his wrist, the way it wriggles and hides and shies away from touch. He is a child pressing fingers to the yellowed hue of a bruise. He begins to forget the pain of taking a Mark, performed by a Death Eater even younger than him. There is no incantation, just a momentary sheen to the eyes of the caster, a total sacrifice of self as the Dark Lord inhabits their body for the most fleeting of moments.

The Dark Lord is jealous of his creations. That's why she hasn't seen Draco in two months. She thinks he is ashamed. She hopes he feels her absence as keenly as she feels his, and wishes that she could be as numb to it as he is.

"Somebody grab him!"

Her gut roils as Harry Potter looks right by her, scanning the crowd for a singe person who might move to the sound of her words. When McGonagall announces that the Slytherins will be led to the dungeons, she gasps for air, chest expanding for the first time since she opened her mouth to shout. Although her parents are home, coddling their ignorance, she knows the faces behind countless masks. Pucey, the only one she was permitted to scorn, is already out of favour and almost dead from an encounter with some recalcitrant werewolves.

Revulsion emanates from the rest of the students, and her vision swims. Pansy wants to scream at them, heart bounding, that they are running to their deaths. There is a wave coming, a disaster, a flow of Dark magic and Dark wizards, the likes of which people like fucking Flitwick and Sprout have never seen before. She knows what it has done to Lucius Malfoy. It isn't so dank in the dungeons as one would imagine: the torches are lit, and the walls reverberate with the sound of the Dark Lord's voice.

Something stirs in her. His words, for all the bravado which comes with having an unspeakable name and absolute power, are desperate. Blaise watches her from across the room, half in conversation with Tracey Davis about the political implications of a battle. The nation that sent their children to this castle, that bent the knee and ignored the warning signs, will have no idea that the saviour of the Wizarding World is dead until it is splashed across the morning edition of the Prophet.

Pansy's mother will read the headline over espresso and sourdough toast, and wonder what has become of her disappointment of a daughter.

The morning of her interview, Pansy dresses in front of Daphne's bedroom mirror in brand new clothes. Her maternal line always provides: there is a trust in her name, not enough to live on, but enough to tide her over until she can find employment. A pair of pistachio green trousers, freshly pressed by the Greengrass house elves, and a suit jacket, are patted carefully into place with shaking hands. She carefully pushes diamond studs into her ears, and pulls back to inspect herself. The fireplace at her back burns furiously, acidic green despite the bright sunshine outside.

Taking a breath, she takes a pinch of Floo powder between two bare fingers, and says, "The Ministry of Magic."

Kingsley Shacklebolt shakes Potter's hand in the doorway of a cramped office, his laughter and stature making Pansy take pause. She has a numbered slip in her hand, and was offered a cup of weak grey tea on arrival. Disgusting as it is, she gulps it down in the hope that the sugar will keep her upright and functional. The chairs in the hallway are upholstered in a faded red velvet, wood chipped in places where nervous hands have picked away at the varnish. Pansy's wand is stowed in her jacket, slung over the back of the chair, and the top button of her shirt is undone to allow some air into her panicked throat.

A sheet of parchment beside the door is accompanied by a quill which hovers, almost eagerly, before it begins to write a number. Her number.

"Forty-seven. Pansy Parkinson."

Potter's face is almost entirely blank as he gestures with one brown hand into the interview room, which comes complete with a plate of biscuits that look roughly two weeks old.

"Please, sit."

He goes to pull out her chair, eyes absentmindedly cast towards the list of 'known Death Eater sympathisers' in his hand, when her hand brushes against his and her stomach drops into the floor.

Pansy's face is pale, but Potter looks fairly calm. Taking a step back, he looks her in the eye for the first time, and smiles.

"Oh," he says, quietly, "I wasn't expecting that."


End file.
